About That
by Sarah1281
Summary: After eight years, Mary thought that she had said everything there was to say about the ill-fated Mr. Pamuk and she knew all that she had to about the matter. Matthew, when he let himself think about it, was similarly sure. Once again, though, some ghosts refuse to lie and there's one pressing and supremely ironic bit about the affair that nobody had realized...


About That

Disclaimer: I do not own Downton Abbey.

Mary was very quiet when it was all over and Matthew wasn't quite sure what to make of that. He had had some experience in this area before but it had never been with anyone that had _mattered_ and they had never reacted like this anyway.

Was she hoping that he would not so carelessly expire here in bed with her like the one before him had done?

That was a rather morbid thought. He felt perfectly fine, too, but the diplomat likely had been feeling fine as well or things would not have…progressed with Mary.

At last, as the silence between them grew almost suffocating, he ventured to ask, "Is everything alright, Mary?"

"What?" She looked startled. "Oh yes, perfectly alright. I was just…"

"Just?" he prompted.

"Is that…is that quite _normal_?" she asked delicately. "Mama and Sybil told me a little but there's only so much that can be verbally communicated."

Matthew frowned, a little uncertain where she was going with this. She had had prior experience but perhaps the Turkish people did things differently. He did not really want to know if that was the case or not but she had asked him a question and if it were truly bothering her then he should try his best to set her mind at ease.

"I believe that it was," he replied. "Is there any reason that you are having doubts?"

"Well, it…it wasn't much at all like what happened a few years ago," she confessed.

Immediately Matthew's thoughts began to run away from him but, with effort, he forced himself to focus once again on Mary. He hated to ask the question but she clearly had concerns and he needed to know what had transpired if he was going to be able to address the m. If she would not answer – and a large part of him hoped that she would not – then he would simply not press her and consider the matter to be settled. "How do you mean?"

For one blessed moment he was so sure that Mary was not going to answer him.

"We removed our clothes and lay down in bed but from there things did not…progress the same," Mary said awkwardly. "We touched each other, yes, but there was no…no…"

Matthew knew what she meant and _he_ had been wondering about the blood. He nodded, sparing her the agony of having to articulate it.

"Perhaps we would have gotten there if he had made it through the night," Mary mused. "Is what just happened the…standard practice?"

"It is," Matthew assured her.

"I see," Mary replied, just as shortly.

They lapsed into silence again and Matthew felt the strangest sense of relief quickly followed by the inevitable guilt. He had told himself once Mary had confessed to having taken a lover and he had decided to propose to her anyway that it did not matter. It was one night no one could prove and the poor man was long dead so there was really nothing to be jealous about. And he had put it behind him or at least he thought he had. He had married her and completed the first of what was sure to be many marital duties and he had not thought of that man once (aided by the fact that he hadn't thought him remarkable at the time and so had no idea what he even looked like after all these years).

But now…he was more pleased than he thought he would have been after finding out that Mary had been mistaken and that that man had not taken as many liberties with his bride as he might have. But he had said it was fine before. And it _had_ been fine and he hadn't blamed her her youthful indiscretion when he had plenty of his own so why this overwhelming relief?

Did that make him a bad person? And who could he possibly discuss the matter with? His mother was right out as there were some things one simply could not discuss with their mothers. Robert was similarly not suitable for this conversation as he was Mary's father and always needed a drink when reminded of the deceased diplomat. Mary herself likely had enough issues on the subject given that it had taken her so many years to tell him about it and he did not want to make it worse or make her feel foolish because she had not known what had really happened. Maybe he could speak with Tom about it. That was sure to be less awkward than Tom having to talk him into marrying Mary after all and ignoring the burgeoning inheritance issue.

"I suppose this means that Pamuk was not my lover after all," Mary said thoughtfully.

"I suppose not," Matthew echoed.

"That's disappointing," she said, sighing.

Matthew drew back. "_Disappointing_?"

"Well, it is, rather," Mary insisted.

"How is it disappointing that what you consistently refer to as a terrible mistake was not as bad as you once feared?" Matthew asked incredulously.

"I have lived with this scandal for so long that I can scarcely recall a time before it," Mary replied after a moment. "And I was so young at the time. I've watched, powerless, as it slowly spread from this house to the Turkish Embassy and just keep on spreading until it really seemed as if you and Papa were the only ones who did not know. Sir Richard certainly made use of the story and even Vera Bates managed to cause havoc with it."

"I still don't-" Matthew started to say.

"I know the consequences of my actions. I know that there are people who haven't looked at me the same way and I know that my prospects were greatly hurt even before the war killed half of our generation," Mary cut in. "I knew this and I had accepted it. I had a scandal that I and several of the people closest to me were desperately trying to hide and going to great lengths to keep secret. And now I find out that it really wasn't as bad as all that. It's…disappointing."

Matthew tried to think around the fact that she apparently wished she really had had the diplomat as a lover. "You had to face the consequences for the act and so you would have preferred to have actually engaged in it?"

Mary nodded. "Yes, that is it exactly! I don't even want to know what Edith would say. Hopefully by now she'd realize that sending out another letter would not exactly fix things…"

"Edith?" Matthew asked, puzzled. "Another letter? What do you mean?"

Mary's eyes widened. "Oh, you didn't know about-?"

"No, I didn't," Matthew replied. "What letter?"

"That's actually how the story started to spread in the first place," Mary explained. "One of the servants saw Mama, Anna, and I moving the body and took the tale to Edith."

"You don't know who it was?" Matthew asked, surprised. "I would have thought you'd want to know everything."

"I do," Mary admitted. "And that's exactly why I can't."

At Matthew's puzzled look, she elaborated.

"I fear that if I knew who started all of this then I would fire them on the spot and it's hard enough to get new servants as it is and so I would rather not add to Carson's staffing problem." She paused. "And intellectually I know that it was as long ago for whoever told as it was for me and Edith and everyone else involved and it really wouldn't be _fair_."

"But you'd still fire him." It wasn't a question.

"Undoubtedly," Mary confirmed. "And then I might very well make sure that he was never hired again. I feel like that might be cruel and so that's why I'm making sure that I do not know who to do that to as I would certainly do it to him."

"Why would the servant take this to your sister and not one of your parents if he absolutely could not keep it to himself?" Matthew wondered.

"An excellent question I might remember to ask before firing him," Mary said dryly. "I suspect that the answer is just that he is either really _really _stupid or he secretly hates us and wants to see us tear each other apart. I really don't know the details and every detail I discover might take me closer to finding out who was stupid enough to tell _Edith_ back in 1913 or 1914 something negative about me."

"What did she do?" Matthew asked, bewildered.

"It is entirely possible that she personally wrote the Turkish Embassy, identified herself as my sister, and then explained what really happened to Pamuk," Mary told him.

Matthew's confusion had not abated. "She…_what_?"

"If you aren't going to listen then I'm not going to repeat myself," Mary declared.

"No, I did hear you – and listen – I just don't understand why your sister would think that starting such a scandal, which even _I_ in all my middle-class glory, know would ruin you would not strongly risk ruining her as well," Matthew claimed.

Mary leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "Edith was far more spiteful before the war and more impulsive, too. I have no doubt that I did something or someone said something about me that provoked her. I can only think of one thing I have ever done to her that would warrant such a response and that was months afterwards when I found out what she had done. She likely didn't _really _mean to ruin me and I'm willing to swear that, as difficult as it is to believe, the consequences to herself as my sister never even crossed her mind."

"But you're not _ruined_," Matthew said pointedly.

"Thankfully," Mary said, nodding. "Because, really, if I were going to be ruined then I might as well have done what I was said to have done. And the worst part is that now that I know the truth I have no way of explaining what really happened."

"No?"

"That would require me to admit that any of it happened and the 'dying in my bed' bit was rather more scandalous than the…_other _parts. At this point it would really just do more harm than good," she told him. "This revelation is almost entirely pointless, I think, since no one can ever know. I might tell Mama later but it is such an awkward discussion that it might just be best not to."

"_I_ know," Matthew reminded her.

"That you do," she agreed. She bit her lip and looked almost nervous. "So now that we both know the truth, how do you feel about it?"

She looked almost as she had when she'd first confessed about the scandal but there really wasn't any need for that, not this time.

"Well, Mary, it may take me awhile to come to terms with it but I am reasonably confident that I can come to accept the fact that you didn't have a lover after all," Matthew said matter-of-factly.

Mary rolled her eyes at him and just like that they were back to normal.

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